Missing Witches - Missing Witches - Doreen Valiente： All Acts Of Love And Pleasure Are My Rituals

00:00:00.000 So today, children, I want to talk about Doreen Valiente, the mother of modern witchcraft,

00:00:11.640 the spy who worshipped the moon and never quite came in from the cold, the sharp researcher

00:00:16.480 who spotted forgeries and accidentally helped create a religion, though she thought organized

00:00:21.120 religion was a curse to humanity, and wrote beautiful books of poems and spells about

00:00:25.620 how to draw down the moon and how to find your own magic alone with the trees. 1.00

00:00:30.320 You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:33.560 Be a witch! Be a witch! Be a witch! Be a witch! Be a witch! Be a witch! 1.00

00:00:37.080 You must be a witch. 0.94

00:00:39.280 Doreen was a high priestess, working closely with men whose names would come to be famously associated with Wicca. 0.93

00:00:45.400 Gardnerian Wicca, Cochran's Craft. 0.99

00:00:48.360 Then there's tall, nerdy, humble, badass Doreen. 1.00

00:00:51.960 In the middle of a bunch of middle-aged, oddly conservative nudists, 0.97

00:00:55.760 With their magical rulebooks copy-pasting Crowley-isms onto co-masonry and Golden Dawn stuff

00:01:01.100 and claiming they descend from a secret hereditary coven, there's Doreen.

00:01:05.960 She'd politely and firmly gather and organize and excise and write spells

00:01:11.800 that offer solace and magic to hundreds and thousands of people still today.

00:01:17.200 Most of the stories I'll reference in this episode come from Philip Heselton's friendly and thorough

00:01:22.580 and delightfully weird biography entitled Doreen Valiente, Witch, and also from George

00:01:28.500 Knowles' biography online. And as usual, we'll link to all our sources on our website,

00:01:32.860 missingwitches.com, and we'll try to do our best with a beloved figure. And as usual,

00:01:37.800 just try to learn something and not fuck it all up. Doreen Valiente's most important contribution, 0.67

00:01:44.480 the piece of writing that became a touchstone for a re-emergent pagan faith practice and core

00:01:49.180 to Wiccan liturgy is the charge of the goddess. So let's call it out in full to this circle.

00:01:55.340 Because we are a circle. You and you and you and I. Joined in the digital dark. Sounds looping us

00:02:04.280 between our ears. Take your mind's eye out to the wild. We go together below a full moon,

00:02:12.880 by the woods, by the sea. We are there with Doreen.

00:02:19.180 Listen to the words of the great mother, who was of old also called Artemis, Astarte, Diana, Melusine, Aphrodite, Seredwin, Dana, Arianrod, Isis, Bride, and by many other names.

00:02:34.740 Whenever ye have need of anything once in a month, and better it be when the moon is full, then ye shall assemble in some secret place and adore the spirit of me, who am queen of all witcheries.

00:02:47.260 There shall ye assemble, ye who are fain to learn all sorcery,

00:02:51.140 yet have not yet won its deepest secrets.

00:02:53.840 To these I will teach things that are yet unknown.

00:02:56.820 And ye shall be free from slavery.

00:02:59.220 And as a sign that ye are really free,

00:03:01.480 ye shall be naked in your rights,

00:03:03.060 and ye shall dance, sing, feast, make music, and love,

00:03:07.100 all in my praise.

00:03:08.740 For mine is the ecstasy of the Spirit,

00:03:10.680 and mine is also joy on earth.

00:03:12.740 For my law is love unto all beings.

00:03:15.360 keep pure your highest ideal strive ever toward it let not stop you or turn you aside for mine

00:03:21.840 is the secret door which opens upon the land of youth and mine is the cup of the wine of life

00:03:27.040 and the cauldron of seredwin which is the holy grail of immortality i am the gracious goddess

00:03:32.360 who gives the gift of joy unto the heart upon earth i give the knowledge of the spirit eternal

00:03:37.660 and beyond death i give peace and freedom and reunion with those who have gone before

00:03:43.860 nor do I demand sacrifice for behold I am the mother of all living and my love is poured out

00:03:50.320 upon the earth hear ye the words of the star goddess she in the dust of whose feet are the

00:03:55.560 hosts of heaven whose body encircleth the universe I who am the beauty of the green earth and the

00:04:01.460 white moon among the stars and the mystery of the waters and the heart's desire call unto thy soul

00:04:07.020 arise and come unto me for I am the soul of nature who giveth life to the universe

00:04:12.860 from me all things proceed and unto me must all things return and before my face beloved of gods

00:04:20.740 and mortals thine inmost divine self shall be unfolded in the rapture of infinite joy

00:04:27.380 let my worship be within the heart that rejoiceth for behold all acts of love and pleasure are my

00:04:35.060 rituals and therefore let there be beauty and strength power and compassion honor and humility

00:04:41.660 mirth and reverence within you. And thou who thinkest to seek for me, know thy seeking and

00:04:47.580 yearning shall avail thee not unless thou know this mystery, that if that which thou seekest

00:04:52.740 thou findest not within thee, thou will never find it without thee. For behold, I have been with thee

00:04:59.840 from the beginning, and I am that which is attained at the end of desire. Where did this liturgy come

00:05:05.840 from. It was created in response to a challenge by Gerald Gardner, and it came from her own decades

00:05:11.700 of research and her own poetic skill and her lifelong deep intuition and connection with the

00:05:16.360 moon and what she saw behind it, something that was very real and very potent. I saw the world of

00:05:22.180 force behind the world of form. But let's step back, because before Doreen joined a coven and 1.00

00:05:27.520 began to take her childhood talent for improvised spell work into the role of priestess writing

00:05:32.220 liturgy, she was gathering books, gathering magical friends, gathering her powers. And

00:05:38.300 before that, Doreen was a secret codebreaker and World War II spy alongside the other math 1.00

00:05:44.460 witch women of Bletchley Park. She was smart, serious, and aware that there are layers of 0.97

00:05:50.160 hidden knowledge in the world and excellent at keeping secrets. Two minutes on Bletchley Park,

00:05:55.660 if you're unfamiliar. Bletchley Park was the central site for British codebreakers during

00:05:59.940 World War II, though at the time this was a closely guarded secret. During the Second World War,

00:06:05.200 the Bletchley Park estate housed the British government Code and Cipher School, which regularly

00:06:10.260 penetrated the secret communications of the Axis powers. Most importantly, the German Enigma and

00:06:16.300 Lorenz ciphers. Among its most notable early personnel was Alan Turing. According to the

00:06:21.640 official historian of British intelligence, the ultra-intelligence produced at Bletchley

00:06:25.780 shortened the war by two to four years, and without it, the outcome of the war would have

00:06:29.900 been uncertain. In January 1945, at the peak of code-breaking efforts, some 10,000 personnel were

00:06:35.720 working at Bletchley and its outstations, and about three-quarters of these were women. Many

00:06:40.940 of the women came from middle-class backgrounds and held degrees in mathematics, physics, and 0.99

00:06:45.440 engineering. Based on the information that Doreen had seemed to know all about the first computer,

00:06:50.860 Colossus, Bletchley Park, and the Enigma machine, her biographer checked the now unclassified

00:06:55.760 records at Bletchley Park and discovered that she had indeed worked there as foreign office

00:07:00.120 civilian temporary senior assistant officer and a translator. Not much is known of her time at

00:07:05.720 Bletchley Park or if she continued to do work for the Secret Service after ostensibly leaving.

00:07:10.260 Her biographer points out that some choices she makes that seem inconsistent with the rest of her

00:07:15.680 ethic and path suggests these two might have been part of a role she was playing.

00:07:21.820 As Sarah Waldron wrote in an article about valienteforbroadly.com,

00:07:25.640 Valiente was pro-contraception, pro-choice, interested in feminism and sexual liberation,

00:07:30.640 and was anti-racism and anti-homophobia long before that was common.

00:07:34.920 So it's a surprise to learn that she joined the ultra-right-wing National Front in 1973.

00:07:40.080 She was briefly involved with the Northern League, a neo-Nazi group whose ideology was

00:07:44.140 utterly at odds with her strongly held beliefs.

00:07:46.600 Valiente had spent a world war fighting against fascists.

00:07:49.960 After 18 months, she let her membership in these organizations lapse.

00:07:55.360 Theories abound. 1.00

00:07:56.480 Doreen Valiente was a natural pragmatist, adept at negotiating dodgy dealings and with a head for meticulous research. 1.00

00:08:03.600 She wasn't a fascist. 0.98

00:08:05.340 One accepted theory is that she thought that these groups, still in relative infancy, might legitimize paganism through patriotism.

00:08:12.260 Another theory was that she was still working for the government, spying on fascists who were unlikely to suspect a middle-aged woman.

00:08:18.780 But Hutton accepts that no proof of this is forthcoming.

00:08:21.860 This is an unavoidable and disappointing year and a half in Doreen's later life,

00:08:26.200 and I wanted to include it early because it's ugly and it's true and I don't know what to do with it.

00:08:30.800 Her biographer, Philip Hesselton, writes,

00:08:33.160 What was going on?

00:08:34.400 Why would someone who had devoted years of her life during the war to combating fascism

00:08:38.720 want to join organizations like the Northern League and the National Front?

00:08:42.700 I think by the time she joined the Northern League, she was well aware of what its policies were

00:08:46.800 and that her instinct as an investigator took over.

00:08:49.540 It was the same, I believe, as with Charles Cardell.

00:08:52.240 She said,

00:08:52.840 I kept on friendly terms with Cardell in order to see what he was up to.

00:08:56.860 That certainly for the latter part of her membership of the National Front,

00:09:00.260 her attitude was one of investigation rather than enthusiastic support

00:09:03.600 is confirmed by what she wrote to Janet and Stuart Farrar

00:09:06.500 about extreme right-wing involvement in occultism.

00:09:09.500 Now it so happens I have done some investigation into this myself in the past,

00:09:13.180 and believe me, there is nothing mythical about it.

00:09:15.840 fascism is alive and sick and living in europe and britain i like this interpretation and i think it

00:09:22.300 jives with the facts but we just don't know and like many other white european mid-century

00:09:26.640 foundational figures she said some things about race that are pretty questionable today she said

00:09:31.640 she did not object to racial mixing which she called revitalizing provided it did not result

00:09:36.940 in a dull materialistic sameness in which the traditions of both races are blurred and lost

00:09:41.820 which is not good for either race. And she refers to what is called the theory of positive racialism,

00:09:47.080 which postulates that every race has something to contribute to the good of humanity as a whole,

00:09:51.820 some purpose to fulfill. She wrote, this may be what the old religion has needed,

00:09:56.160 namely to tell people that they are not only orphaned of the great mother earth or nature, 0.71

00:10:00.900 but also cut off from the group soul of their race, and that they need the community of blood

00:10:06.140 and soil in order to find again their health of body and soul. We can get behind this only to

00:10:11.240 the extent that she doesn't seem to support the preservation of only the white race, but as she

00:10:15.580 states, of all races. Difference is good, but reading this from a contemporary standpoint,

00:10:20.640 it's scary to think of each race having a singular purpose, because honestly, that's how you get 0.67

00:10:24.800 slavery. We know the American ideal of the melting pot that strips away difference and demands 0.96

00:10:29.720 assimilation is hurtful, violence. So we're willing to give Doreen the benefit of the doubt. Remember, 0.55

00:10:35.820 whether we buy that her association with the National Front was purely investigative or not,

00:10:40.260 I mean, it's not like she could have known the enemy by following them on Twitter.

00:10:44.620 Her takeaway was that fascism is sick, and we see a lot of this in modern witchcraft's

00:10:49.700 conversations about appropriation, that it's good to investigate your own ancestors, but

00:10:54.560 to know that our one common ancestor is this earth.

00:10:57.800 And because we know of her history as a spy, her own characterization of her time with

00:11:01.920 the National Front as investigation, and because she spent such a short time in this realm,

00:11:05.960 were willing to accept, for now, that her intentions were honest and without malice.

00:11:11.660 Valiente was reading and collecting material on magic and witchcraft,

00:11:15.500 including a private collection of books from an OTO adherent,

00:11:18.920 more on this branch of the Golden Dawn and the Lady Frida Harris episode,

00:11:22.840 when she stumbled on news of Gardner's Circle.

00:11:26.280 In 1952, Doreen read an article in the Weekly Magazine Illustrated,

00:11:30.340 entitled Witchcraft in Britain,

00:11:32.440 which mentioned a southern coven of British witches

00:11:35.080 which had performed a ritual in the New Forest in 1940 to try and stop the threatened invasion

00:11:40.660 of Britain. She contacted the author, told him of her occult studies, and asked to be put in touch

00:11:45.480 with what the article had called the witch cult. Her letter was passed on to Gerald Gardner,

00:11:50.020 who had been initiated as a witch in the New Forest in 1939. After corresponding back and

00:11:55.060 forth for a while, Doreen expressed her interest in joining the coven. Gardner invited Doreen to

00:12:00.460 tea at a friend's house near the New Forest. During the summer of 1952 in a little town called

00:12:05.520 Christchurch, Hampshire, there still lived a lady called Dafoe, the very same lady who had introduced

00:12:11.360 Gardner to the New Forest coven in the autumn of 39. She used Dafoe as a pseudonym because only a

00:12:17.160 year before the old Witchcraft Act of 1735 had been repealed and technically witchcraft was still

00:12:23.380 considered by many a criminal offense. To declare oneself a witch could bring about all sorts of

00:12:28.060 social complications. At this first meeting in Defoe's home, Gardner, of whom Doreen says one

00:12:33.360 felt he had seen far horizons and encountered strange things, didn't invite her to join his

00:12:38.620 coven, but presented Doreen with a copy of his book, High Magic's Aid. This he did to all potential

00:12:44.060 initiates in order to gauge their reactions to ritual nudity and scourging. After further

00:12:50.180 correspondence, a year later in 1953, Doreen received her first degree initiation into the

00:12:55.440 craft. Tradition demanded that an opposite member of sex conduct the initiation, and so Gardner

00:13:00.900 decided to conduct it himself. On Midsummer's Eve, he was due to attend a druid solstice gathering

00:13:06.020 at Stonehenge, where he was to loan the order his ritual sword. Traveling in from his witchcraft 0.54

00:13:10.860 museum on the Isle of Man, on his way, he stopped off at the home of Defo to initiate Doreen. 0.63

00:13:16.460 That evening, Doreen was reborn as Ameth, the pseudonym, or craft name as it is called,

00:13:22.480 by which she was to be known.

00:13:24.080 During the initiation, Gardner used his own book of shadows,

00:13:26.900 containing, as he claimed,

00:13:28.400 information and remnants of rites taken from an old religion

00:13:31.280 passed down through the ages to the old New Forest coven.

00:13:34.560 But from it he also read a passage Doreen instantly recognized.

00:13:37.960 It came not from an old religion, but from a more contemporary source,

00:13:41.200 the Gnostic Mass, written by Alistair Crowley.

00:13:43.800 Doreen said,

00:13:44.540 I told Gerald afterwards,

00:13:45.740 I think he was none too pleased at my recognition of his source.

00:13:49.320 But Gerald then gave Doreen free access to his Book of Shadows and other materials he'd collected.

00:13:54.120 He still claimed most had been passed down from an old coven, but much of it was fragmentary.

00:13:58.860 So working in collaboration with Gardner, she began to rewrite his Book of Shadows.

00:14:02.620 This revised version of the book served as the basis for what was to become known as Gardnerian Wicca,

00:14:07.280 which still today is one of the most dominant traditions of contemporary witchcraft.

00:14:12.180 But by 1957, a rift was starting to form between Gardner, Doreen, and the rest of his coven.

00:14:17.700 It was caused mainly by his relentless pursuit of publicity

00:14:20.320 and would lead Doreen and others to leave his coven.

00:14:23.900 There are a couple different stories about what precipitates her eventual break with Gardner

00:14:27.340 and sends members of that circle spiraling out to create their own covens like dandelion seeds

00:14:33.020 in the poetic way she would see it all making sense when she looked back later.

00:14:37.240 The stories that resonate most for me of why she may have needed to leave

00:14:41.000 involve an unfortunate and unsurprising bit of misogyny.

00:14:45.060 Since meetings could last until fairly late,

00:14:47.240 members without cars or with long distances to cover, like Doreen,

00:14:50.680 slept in a hut neighboring the witch's cottage.

00:14:53.960 Gerald liked to cuddle up with whoever had been his high priestess. 0.96

00:14:57.420 He was too old to engage in penetrative sex, 0.97

00:14:59.800 but would have enjoyed affectionate caresses.

00:15:02.240 Doreen was not opposed to all acts of love and pleasure,

00:15:05.920 as we know by having written The Charge of the Goddess,

00:15:08.240 but she did apparently find these cuddles from Gerald embarrassing.

00:15:14.440 Oh gosh. Okay. And then I'm just going to tell you this story really quick. So she's,

00:15:28.760 she's not around one day for a coven meeting and he knows she's not going to be around and he

00:15:35.120 chooses that day to have two new members initiated. And it's sort of weird. The rest

00:15:39.860 of the members of the coven are like, why are you doing it when the high priestess isn't here? 0.79

00:15:44.440 normally she would be the one to do it seems like you're kind of sneaking some new cute folks in the

00:15:50.520 back door it's like sexy young couple and so then she comes back and she's like oh cool cool we have

00:15:55.560 new members uh well let's talk about it and you know maybe we should have like a rule book or

00:16:02.180 something that says like we don't bring in new people without us all talking about it first like

00:16:05.900 maybe something like that would be good for our coven and he was like oh no don't worry we don't

00:16:11.240 need a rule book i have this ancient rule book and it was passed down to me and look at it it's

00:16:18.940 got the laws of witchcraft in it and there's a page there's a there's one of the laws on the

00:16:24.780 first page read and the greatest virtue of a high priestess is that she recognizes that youth is 0.91

00:16:30.120 necessary to the representation of the goddess so she will retire gracefully in favor of a younger

00:16:35.900 woman, should the coven so decide in council. Struck Doreen that this whole exercise was just

00:16:42.500 a way to get rid of her, and she tells of her own reactions to seeing the laws. We were apparently

00:16:49.180 supposed to be overawed. Our actual reaction was to be extremely skeptical. None of us had ever set

00:16:55.480 eyes on these alleged laws before, though we noticed that they incorporated a preliminary

00:16:59.580 passage from the Book of Shadows commencing, keep a book in your own hand of right. This passage is

00:17:05.540 reproduced in Gerald's book Witchcraft today. If these laws were so ancient and authoritative,

00:17:10.620 why had Gerald never given them to us before? We discussed these matters, realizing that the

00:17:15.980 question had become, by Gerald's own actions, one of confidence in him. And the more we examined

00:17:20.880 the alleged laws, the less confidence we had in either him or them. Life changed dramatically for

00:17:27.940 Doreen in 1964, when both her mother, Edith, and Gerald Gardner died. It was also that year,

00:17:34.020 perhaps due to growing tensions and internal politics emerging within gardenerianism,

00:17:39.420 that Doreen decided to move on and take up with another tradition.

00:17:42.880 She was initiated into the clan of Tubalcain, a coven run by Robert Cochran.

00:17:48.400 Cochran claimed to be a hereditary witch and was the founder of the tradition now referred to as

00:17:53.340 the 1734 tradition, a tradition allegedly handed down through his family.

00:17:59.120 According to biographers, Doreen became pretty disillusioned with Cochrane as she began to

00:18:04.500 realize his family lineage was more fiction than fact. In fact, his wife outright dismissed his

00:18:10.320 claims. And because he was openly contemptuous of Gardnerian witches, which bugged her. Whatever

00:18:15.300 her issues, she had real fondness and admiration for Gardner and love of her former coven.

00:18:20.300 The breaking point, though, I think, was Cochrane's addiction. It was colored as an

00:18:24.560 obsession with witch's potions. She left him, and Cochran died in 1966 in what would appear to have

00:18:31.540 been a ritual suicide. He ingested belladonna leaves, most commonly known as deadly nightshade.

00:18:37.460 After the death of her husband, Casimiro, in April 1972, Doreen began to devote much of her

00:18:42.540 time to writing. Her first book was An ABC of Witchcraft in 1973, followed by Natural Magic

00:18:48.160 in 1975, and Witchcraft for Tomorrow in 1978. These three books did much to establish Doreen

00:18:54.440 as an authority on witchcraft and magic. Many of today's leading authors, researchers, and pagans

00:18:59.400 contacted Doreen, and she helped them with knowledge, anecdotes, and memories of leading

00:19:04.120 craft figures. For those more discerning, she made available her large and extensive private library,

00:19:10.160 and by guiding their research and proofreading and editing many of their works. In this way,

00:19:14.820 Doreen helped and contributed to many of today's leading Wiccan titles. One of her powers, one of

00:19:20.660 her characteristics that I love and relate to was that she was a lifelong researcher and archivist.

00:19:26.020 From as early as 1951, for most of the rest of her life, Doreen kept press cuttings on subjects

00:19:30.980 that interested her. Witchcraft, of course, but also black magic, folklore, superstitions,

00:19:36.200 naturism, sexual liberation, UFOs, ancient sites and civilizations, psychic phenomena,

00:19:42.980 strange abilities, and so on. The cuttings were from a variety of different newspapers and magazines,

00:19:48.240 and I suspect that she must have asked her neighbors to save copies for her to go through.

00:19:52.480 They are a rich source of information for future chroniclers of Dorian's life and interests.

00:19:57.080 That's from her biographer.

00:19:59.060 He also says, John Bellampane described her flat to me.

00:20:02.340 It was limited to a single room where she had her bed, a small but ancient rented television,

00:20:07.120 her word processor, not even a computer really, and one armchair.

00:20:11.280 Unfortunately, there was little room for anything else,

00:20:13.380 as the rest of the 15 by 15 foot apartment was taken up with racks of metal shelving with over

00:20:18.980 2,000 books on the shelves that she had collected over the years and which formed the basis of her

00:20:23.660 research. The books were often stacked three deep and the rather cheap shelving bowed in the middle

00:20:28.920 with the weight. If I ever asked Doreen what she knew on a topic, she would say, oh yes, John,

00:20:33.840 if you go to that rack over there, second shelf down in the middle, then on the second row back,

00:20:38.280 you will find a book with a red cover. If you turn that to page 187 or maybe 188, you will see

00:20:44.400 that on the second paragraph, there is a mention of what you were looking for. She did this so many

00:20:48.600 times that I started to test her on this ability, and she picked me up on this too. I love her

00:20:53.960 curiosity and diligence, and I can picture her house exactly having been in witch houses that 1.00

00:20:59.260 were much the same. It was in the 70s that Doreen spoke out and challenged the British government, 1.00

00:21:04.400 who were attempting to pass new legislation against witchcraft.

00:21:07.300 They hadn't really counted for Doreen Valiente.

00:21:10.820 She succeeded in lobbying the Member of Parliament,

00:21:13.120 and in the end, the new laws were never passed.

00:21:15.700 Throughout the last three decades of her life,

00:21:17.840 Doreen gave freely of her time and energy,

00:21:20.380 contributed much of her research, knowledge, and experience,

00:21:23.140 not only through writing and poetry, but through her personal appearances

00:21:26.220 and public speaking at events and conventions

00:21:28.360 regularly organized by the Pagan Federation, founded in 1971.

00:21:31.880 one. In her efforts to provide genuine information on paganism and to counter the many misconceptions

00:21:37.300 about its religion, in 1995 she agreed to become patron of the Center for Pagan Studies,

00:21:42.740 founded by John Bell and Payne, her last high priest and working partner. And it was to the

00:21:48.140 Center for Pagan Studies that Doreen made her last public speech. Doreen's contributions to

00:21:53.760 modern-day witchcraft are immeasurable, and yet she was one of the few early pioneers who shunned

00:21:58.640 publicity. She believed that a certain amount of secrecy on the part of covens should be maintained

00:22:02.760 and that the future of paganism in the age of Aquarius lies in feminism and green issues

00:22:07.840 associated with the environment. In her last address to the National Conference of the Pagan

00:22:12.500 Federation, held at Fairfield Hall in Croydon, London, on the 22nd of November, 1997, she said,

00:22:19.740 The initiates of the ancient pagan mysteries were taught to say, I am the child of earth and starry

00:22:25.240 heaven, and there is no part of me that is not of the gods. If we in our own day believe this,

00:22:31.300 then we will not only see it as true of ourselves, but of other people also.

00:22:35.700 Doreen came from folk magic, and in the end seemed to circle back to natural magic, folk magic,

00:22:40.920 improvised personal practice. I love this description of how she would lead circles

00:22:45.180 with her third husband and the great, inspiring love of her life. Doreen and her high priest,

00:22:51.140 Ron Cook would arrive in Ron's three-wheeled, reliant robin,

00:22:54.660 valiantly chugging along at 30 miles an hour until it reached its destination,

00:22:58.760 with Doreen and Ron stopping every few miles to drink strong tea from a thermos flask.

00:23:03.100 It was wonderful for we young coven leaders in our glamorous black velvet robes

00:23:07.520 to see Doreen casting a circle, sky-clad,

00:23:10.300 save for woolen cloak, witchy regalia, and rubber boots.

00:23:14.020 Neither clothed nor naked took on a whole new meaning,

00:23:16.840 but Doreen's outfit epitomized her attitude,

00:23:18.880 at once, at one with nature, loving witchiness, but ever practical and never pretentious.

00:23:25.900 Jean Williams remembered how Doreen cast the circle with her broomstick, taking command of

00:23:30.020 the space. She then appeared to grow to immense stature as, broomstick in hand, she summoned the 0.69

00:23:35.300 mighty ones to guard the circle. I have never before or since witnessed such natural authority.

00:23:42.140 I love that at age 62, Doreen decided to try to learn how to drive.

00:23:47.540 It didn't really work out for her, but I relate to that too.

00:23:51.040 And I love that she tried.

00:23:53.220 Mostly, I love the descriptions of how she would improvise.

00:23:56.980 Doreen and the rest of the coven were doing their right for the living earth.

00:24:00.920 Magic lived in the woods and hills and wild places.

00:24:04.060 They worked in the dark so everything was unscripted.

00:24:06.780 You couldn't read in the dark.

00:24:07.920 You had to act from your spirit and connect to the power of the land,

00:24:11.720 or on a seashore to the power of the ocean.

00:24:14.220 this is the kind of magic that makes sense to me a practice that emerges joyfully in response to

00:24:21.020 the living moment the sacred flickering present i think in the description of these rituals

00:24:27.620 doreen came closest to what she really wanted out of her relationship with the land her biographer

00:24:32.400 writes towards the end of her life she rejected the elaborate intellectual magical systems and

00:24:37.200 traditions into which she had been initiated and came back to the simple communing with the old

00:24:41.860 ones. This freedom to simply commune, to believe and to create, along with a feminist, Gaia, and

00:24:50.020 queer-friendly bent to her philosophy, is, I think, the seed of Doreen Valiente's greatest impact.

00:24:55.220 A single line from her Charge of the Goddess became a touchstone for queer craft.

00:25:00.160 All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals. And this is the title of a book by Yvonne Arburo,

00:25:06.880 a workbook and guide for fostering inclusive Wicca and diverse covens.

00:25:11.860 Here's a last set of stories that show Doreen's incredible humility from John Bell and Payne,

00:25:16.880 founder of the Center for Pagan Studies, describing how he met Doreen.

00:25:21.120 One day in October 1997, we had a phone call from one of our regular attenders who told us that

00:25:26.080 Doreen Valiente had heard about the work we were doing and wondered if she could come along and

00:25:29.660 have a look. Tony is an unsung hero, and for many years he was Doreen's friend and unofficial taxi

00:25:34.740 service, taking her on her weekly shopping trips. He was an animal activist, something Doreen was

00:25:39.420 very keen on. He stayed a close friend right up until the end of her life. We were running an

00:25:44.240 event for Sam Hain, complete with a firework display. Doreen came along, and to be honest,

00:25:48.560 I tried not to meet her. I was not sure of what I would say other than, I have all your books.

00:25:54.960 I gave a talk during the event in the barn, and I was horrified to see her at the back of the room.

00:26:00.140 I have since likened this to the Pope turning up to a local village church and the priest being as

00:26:05.000 nervous as I was. However, she came up to meet me at the end and said how much she enjoyed the

00:26:09.220 evening in my talk. She asked if it would be okay if she had my phone number. I wrote it down for

00:26:13.840 her never expecting a call, assuming she was just being polite. A few days later, there was a phone

00:26:18.360 call, and the person on the other end of the line had a soft West Country accent. My name is Doreen

00:26:23.720 Valiente. I came to your event the other evening. I do hope you remember me. Of course I do, Mrs.

00:26:29.400 Valiente, I replied. Well, I've been looking at the work the Center has been doing, and I'm very

00:26:33.260 impressed. Would you mind if I got a bit more involved? I was so shocked, and for the want of

00:26:38.160 something sensible to say. I said, that would be lovely. What do you think you could do?

00:26:43.060 Well, she said, I'm not too good on my pins these days, but if you sat me at the sink,

00:26:47.580 I could wash the dishes. This was, I felt, a great lesson. Instead, Bell and Payne asked her

00:26:54.680 to give a talk at the center. She sat in a small armchair on an empty stage. She shared stories and

00:27:00.660 ideas. She asked, we talk about means of raising power, but what actually is the witch power that

00:27:06.600 is raised. She saw it as identical with what was variously known as mana, prana, odile, animal

00:27:12.900 magnetism, and organ energy. And she went on, perhaps today when people's minds are more open,

00:27:18.440 we may begin to study this realm of subtle energies more closely, and perhaps rediscover

00:27:23.000 what really happens when witches gather together to raise the cone of power. Doreen asked what we

00:27:28.520 should do with this power once raised. Whilst acknowledging the craft as a fertility cult,

00:27:33.540 she went on to say, the idea of fertility is something that goes much deeper than the hope

00:27:38.500 for good crops and increased livestock, and I am sure that it always did. There is a spiritual as

00:27:44.980 well as a material fertility. There is the need for people to be alive and vital and creative.

00:27:52.020 Life is here to be enjoyed, not just endured. John Bell and Payne would write, when she was

00:27:58.640 asked to take part in the conference, she had no idea she was going to be the main event of the day.

00:28:03.540 She phoned me the following morning to see what I thought of her talk and genuinely said,

00:28:07.680 I thought all those young people wouldn't know who I was.

00:28:10.340 I thought I might be talking in a small room somewhere to 10 or 15 people who would be

00:28:14.280 interested in what old Doreen had to say, but no idea so many.

00:28:18.880 I thought at first they'd come to see someone else.

00:28:21.240 I was so surprised.

00:28:22.880 All those people, John.

00:28:24.160 How did I do?

00:28:25.280 My instant reply was, I think 2,000 people giving you a standing ovation says that you

00:28:31.300 did all right, Doreen.

00:28:32.340 It was the Pagan Federation's biggest ever event.

00:28:37.080 He commented,

00:28:38.440 Doreen's last request was that her poetry be published.

00:28:47.660 She hid worlds in language and left behind a subtle map for seeing what she saw behind the world of form.

00:28:54.320 And so let's close with the poem she wrote originally for her friend,

00:28:57.520 the flamboyant, fraudulent, but still in her eyes magical Robert Cochran.

00:29:03.600 Let's send this elegy for a dead witch out to the ether with love for ourselves,

00:29:08.540 the versions of ourselves who have worn masks,

00:29:11.880 who have come to tables armed with our shadows, fierce with protection,

00:29:15.980 who have lived like flickering lights and loved and failed and done their best.

00:29:21.220 And let's send it out to ancestors and friends who've gone,

00:29:24.220 but who are with us here in the listening dark.

00:29:27.520 proud, problematic, patient.

00:29:31.800 And mostly, let's light up a full moon

00:29:34.200 where Valiente said all true magic lies in our mind

00:29:38.220 and call this elegy out to her,

00:29:41.740 sky-clad in rubber boots,

00:29:44.140 watching the age of Aquarius rise.

00:29:47.520 To think that you are gone over the crest of the hills

00:29:50.640 as the moon passed from her fullness riding the sky

00:29:54.100 and the white mare took you with her.

00:29:57.520 To think that we will wait another life

00:29:59.640 to drink the wine from the horns and leap the fire.

00:30:03.940 Farewell from this world, but not from the circle.

00:30:07.900 That place that is between the worlds

00:30:10.160 shall hold return in due time.

00:30:13.780 Nothing is lost.

00:30:15.920 The half of a fruit from the tree of Avalon

00:30:18.700 shall be our reminder.

00:30:19.720 Among the fallen leaves, this life treads underfoot.

00:30:25.320 Let the rain weep.

00:30:28.440 Waken in sunlight from the realms of sleep. 1.00

00:30:32.080 You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. 1.00

00:30:35.240 Be a witch. 1.00

00:30:36.420 Be a witch. 1.00

00:30:37.220 Be a witch. 1.00

00:30:37.700 Be a witch. 1.00

00:30:38.780 You must be a witch. 0.97

00:30:40.680 Thanks for listening to the Missing Witches podcast.

00:30:43.020 Be sure to come back Wednesday for Witches Found, where we'll hear from a mother-daughter witch duo, Celia and Mileda Jimenez.

00:30:52.600 In the meantime, hit us up at missingwitches at gmail.com or on social media at missingwitches.

00:30:59.420 Blessed be.

Missing Witches - April 14, 2019

Missing Witches - Doreen Valiente： All Acts Of Love And Pleasure Are My Rituals

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